Anything but Qualifying

Warning: Lots of Profanity, Kinda a rant

If you are one of my professors who has somehow found this in spite of my attempted obfuscation... please don't read this

Cover Image: I took this image on the morning of one of my written exams when walking to campus. Felt apt.

Quick Background & Facts:

Qualifying exams (or just quals) are a set of examinations which traditionally happen in either the 2nd or 5th quarters of PhD school (depending on if you came in with a masters or bachelors respectively). Different emphases of different departments of different schools can all have wildly different structures of what they look like, but a traditional qual often involves both written and oral components. They are meant to exmain weather you have mastered the fundamentals of the field you are looking to do research. They are often the hardest exams folks can take and if you do not pass (sometimes you get multiple trys) you wash out.

Opinions from my Experiences:

They suck, they are dumb, they are borderline cruel (the traditional ones at least). Let's get into why!

At some-point someone asked for experiences with qualifying exams (I believe they where trying to petition their department to end them). I was going to send a few sentences in support of their mission but it boiled into this mess about my experience and explains just how silly and wasteful they are.

Oh geeze do I! I am just going to talk about my experience in going through mechanical engineering qual which I finished last quarter. Note that everyone in my cohort had funded positions at this point and that this qual was of the traditional form (with written and oral components).

About four months out, I got an email from a faculty member with a link to a dropbox and a general vague description of the exams and that they are looking for, "a graduate understanding of undergraduate content" whatever the hell that means. In said drop box is course syllabi and materials from the relevant undergrad course work. That is it. No grading rubric for the exam, no further description of the format and layout, no definition of what consists a "PASS" (i.e. required grade / points) or a "FAIL", just a big fat srug emoji and goodluck.

As my cohort started at OSU in the fall of 2020 (nothing big happening of course) none of us really knew each other so even finding methods to communicate and carve out time was difficult. We eventually got started and were meeting for three-hour group sessions about three times a week two months out. One month out we where meeting almost every day with our advisors giving us permission to pretty much stop our actual work just so we could focus on studying. And while that was gracious and benevolent of them, we still had research and publication deadlines we were going to need to ultimately reach.

Luckily for myself and my cohort, generations of graduate students still within our labs and beyond have been subjugated to these stupid things and where fully aware of the ludicrousness of them and egar to help us pass. Even at one point holding a "mock oral qual" for us a week before the exams. This was amazing of them and defiantly something I will be paying forward to those who come after me, but still left us with many questions about what would even be on these exams as they change every year.

By the time of the exams food doesn't really have a taste anymore. I am not sleeping instead speeding hours staring at the ceiling reciting the statements of the second law and how they can be shown to be congruent with the first. And I long for the sweet release of a failing grade just so I can be done with this and go get an actual job where they pay you real money and treat you with respect.

In the written exams many of the questions where ill posed with terrible figures, incomplete equation sheets, and even some pretty horrendous grammatical errors. It was clear that some of them where written the night before with little to no care. In one of my oral examinations two of the question posing faculty members seemed to egg each other on seeing who could ask the weirdest question requiring the most niche technical answers. Also all the damn white board markers where out of ink.

What seems to be implemented in my department is one of the better implementations of this traditional qual. Where all the examinees are fully funded and continually paid through the prep period, lots of help and encouragement is provided from those who have already past, and faculty who do indeed seem to want people to pass. These are all things I know many of my colleagues in departments where funding is sparser do not have. And even in this potential "best case sinerio" the qualifying examination still feel vague, counterproductive, archaic, anxiety provoking, and not even examining what they should, which is whether someone can do the work of research. They instead only verify grades received in undergrad from other ABET accredited universities and sometimes even themselves. And in this process hundreds of hours of students’ time amounting to months of research is squandered, many (very expensive) hours of faculty time taken to write, grade, and administer these exams is shot out the door, and the tax payer

I am not against the idea of a qualifying exam, especially when I look at the methods our colleagues in the nuclear engineering department currently use (where the exam effectively becomes a rigorous lit review on topics pertaining to your research, done over the course of a month). BUT the method that I was subjected to at best verifies my good grades in undergrad and the silly Latin next to that degree and at worst is a nothing more than institutionalized hazing, complete with vague rituals, stupid rivalries between those in the club, and just being a real dick thing to do to people who are taking a pay cut to come work for you.

If you want to evaluate peoples ability to do research then EVALUATE THEIR GOD DAMN RESEARCH YOU DUMMIES

This rant was written one month after I passed all three and was a pretty heat of the moment thing (I did not end up sending this for review). One of my friends who did so well on the written portion of one of the exams that she did not have to do the oral component (a thing we weren't even informed could happen ahead of time). Unfortunately she did not pass a different one, meaning she had one more shot at passing that specific exam... in six months. She was not able to see the written exam she failed on, or see the notes from the committee that failed her. Her notification looked exactly like mine only one of the words said fail instead of pass.

I knew she was an anxious person (grad school has a type), but I only learned later just how dark it got for her. We took the first round in the fall and she had to wait till the spring to take them again. She told me that over the holiday break she couldn't relax. That it became a stressors began to impact her social and family life and that she had to suffer through intermittent panic attacks that where a direct result to actually take the qual.

One of the professors (we will call them Lackland) on her examination committee was a devout Mormon (so much so they kept that book on their desk for all to see). This friend of mine is a lesbian and had just started a lovely relationship with another gal in the department. They specifically felt they had to keep their relationship under-raps because she had to go in front of this committee with professor Lackland. While none of us had any reason to believe that Lackland would treat her unfairly, other than their religion, she couldn't take any risks. The process was too opaque with seemingly no recourse if a professor did treat a student unfairly. That alone is reason enough to end this process, but it gets worse

When spring rolled around she took the written and seemed incredibly confident about it. "I think I just did so well I won't have to take the orals," she said giggling when leaving the examination room. When the end of the week rolled around the notification was sent to her about when and where the oral examination was to be held, seemingly indicating that she did not test out of the orals. What seemed from my perspective to be a tailspin of self doubt was descended down. Shattered confidence is not a great place to be before an the eve of an exam on which your future career is hinging on.

The night before (around 9 pm if memory serves correct) the exam Prof Lackland emails my friend and asks to change the time and location of the exam from 10 am on the ground floor of our building to 8 am on the third due to a "prior engagement". Besides the fact that this professor had not cleared it with the others on the committee (one of whom was in a wheel chair in a building without a working elevator due to repairs), you want to just change the setting and place do to a prior fucking commitment?!

I am sorry you have to do your job and use a god damn calendar. Also what the fuck was the prior commitment? You have been giving this person panic attacks for six god damn months and you can't keep the appointment YOU scheduled. Fucking jackass.

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but wait

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It gets better

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This motherfucker was too lazy to grade their portion of the exam till the night before the oral. My friend had indeed knocked that pice-a-shit test outta the goddamn water, <BUT> was still subjected to all the stress, all the self doubt, all of Lackland's fucking bull-shit for nothing. For absolutely nothing.

My experience was unpleasant, but something that when done was a new thing to complain about, and that I still kinda feel proud of tbh (an ency wincey (if useless) chip on my shoulder). Even if she feels the same way, my friends experience was just cruel. Plan and simple, weather due to negligence or malice, they where just cruel to her. Having a system where that sort of thing is possible, where cruelty for cruelty's sake is possible, is not appropriate in any context. My friend was and is (I cannot stress this enough) <THE> most qualified person in the room.

She was the first of us to publish, she had the highest grades in the group, she could answer any topical question with deep knowledgeable understanding and put my brute *that'll do* mentality to shame. When I think about being a good academic, I think about being her. Her reservoir of true understanding deeper than crater lake, her blind passion for the subject is awe inspiring, and her ability to entice those around her to get exited about the subject in infections. If she hadn't passed, then I don't know if I would've been able to stay at such stupid and blind institution.

In the end these exams are for nothing productive. Absolutely nothing. My research was in a completely different field then what I was bureaucratically registered for (I follow the funding). Even if it was I would have already been doing said research for a year and a half and would already be well on my way to expert status in what I needed to know to do said research. And if I wasn't able to do that research my funding would have been striped by my advisor.